Streamlined for Dispatch is Valentina Stieger’s first artist’s book and covers a series of works of the same name. It presents thirteen paintings from previous and ongoing series, all of which are made from the conventional elements of painting, such as canvas, frames, and varnish. However, she uses previously printed, colorfully patterned fabrics as canvases—bedsheets and pillowcases from different eras—which deal with visual aspects of abstract painting in their designs.
By mounting them on frames, Stieger projects the patterns back to their place of origin and thus creates a tension between intellectual loftiness and trivial decoration. Furthermore, she poses questions about the value of reproductions and originals which become apparent in the intermingling of art and (everyday) design as well as in the contrast between individual artistic style and faceless, technically reproduced design. The conceptual basis of the publication is standardization. The A4-sized page becomes the fixed size for the graphic dismantling of the canvases, which are fragmented in their original size and are thus connected back to their original pattern.
In its rough texture, the publication recalls a mail order catalog for home textiles, like those that end up in our mailboxes by the thousands and ultimately land in the wastepaper basket. The choice of these modalities represents a transfer from art to the mass-market catalog and back to the artist’s book. The 392 pages of illustrations are supplemented with an essay by David Misteli.
This publication was made possible with the generous support of Kanton St.Gallen, SWISSLOS/Kulturförderung, Stadt St.Gallen and Stiftung für Ostschweizer Kunstschaffen.
